Economic Development
IIB’s economic development department helps immigrants and refugees to fulfill their financial goals and strengthen long-term, multi-generational self-sufficiency. Clients can participate in a matched savings program that enables them to save for a home, car, educational expense, or computer. They can also receive small business counseling and learn to purchase their first home.
Meet Abdulkadir
When South Boston resident Abdulkadir
Mohamed immigrated to the United
States from southern Somalia in
1998, he dreamed of starting his own business ...
Services
Savings for Success
IIB’s Savings for Success program stimulates refugee participants’ savings rates and builds their assets through economic literacy training and a matching funds incentive. This program assists refugees to build their personal economic assets while learning long-term financial planning. Ongoing activities include: program enrollment, account management, individual counseling, financial literacy workshops and counseling to support an asset purchase. Financial literacy workshops cover topics such as goal setting, budgeting, banking services, credit, taxes, consumer protection, insurance, investing, and retirement.
Bridges to Business
Bridges to Business is a comprehensive refugee Microenterprise development program that increases economic self-sufficiency of refugee families in Greater Boston by promoting the start-up or expansion of microenterprises. Ongoing activities include: One-on-one business planning and business counseling, educational workshops for entrepreneurs, access to mainstream small business resources, including lending institutions and mainstream markets.
Homebuying 101
Homebuying 101 provides native language instruction (utilizing translated text and subject review worksheets) on the content and principles of buying a first home to newcomers, including those who speak Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Cantonese, and those able to study within an ESL format. As a result of their participation in the class, graduates are more knowledgeable and skillful in the areas of savings, credit, mortgage finance, assembling the homebuying “team,” the house shopping process and insurance. The project also promotes homeownership rates among low- and moderate-income linguistic minorities in the city of Boston by fostering the understanding of the saving and credit issues that keep people from buying homes by providing individual homebuyer counseling.
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